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Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Mundials World Champion, Zoro Moreira, has joined the elite Evolve Instructor Team in Singapore. With his addition, there are now 7 BJJ Black Belt Instructors from Brazil at Evolve Singapore. 3 out of the 7 are World Champions. Zoro is a professional MMA fighter with a 3-0 record.

Zoro Moreira holds a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under the legendary Roberto "Gordo" Correa de Lima, the head of Evolve Brazil.

30 comments:

Iftikar
said...

i just got reconfirmation that a billionaire sheik in the middle east owns evolve. a close friend of mine is from dubai and he told me. my source is 100% on it. this explains why evolve skyrocketed so quickly to become the top gym in asia. when a billionaire sheik owns it, it is easy to recruit all these world champions.

to be purely objective and fair (i live in manila), i would say the top 2 mma gyms in asia are evolve in singapore and tiger muay thai in thailand. as i much as i hate to admit it, you can't argue with their credentials. read their instructor list - they are a clear cut above the rest in terms of quality and quantity of instructors for muay thai, bjj, mma, wrestling, and boxing. japan is the king of mma and even they don't have gyms like tiger muay thai or evolve.

i agree with you 100% that japan is the top of the food chain in asia for mma because of its history of vale tudo, pride, dream, sengoku, etc. i was talking about a single gym though. and i was trying to give credit where credit is due. i've trained at tiger muay thai and it was awesome. i haven't been to singapore yet. from my training in japan, i find all the gyms to be tiny. if there is a gym in japan that has better credentials in terms of both quality and quantity of instructors, please let me know! i would definitely be up for training there as my goal is just to learn as much as i can.

I don't know who your source is, but the newspapers here in Singapore said the billionaire owner of Evolve is some guy named Chatri. I train at another gym here and I might switch when my membership expire. Not sure though as I heard it is quite expensive.

What I see here is some people in the region feeling a little concerned about rumours of Evolve expanding into their area and throwing money around and breaking up the great clubs that they are currently part of. But there is really nothing to be afraid of.

To be honest I had a similar insecurity about them coming to Taiwan- for about two minutes. Because I realized money can't buy what we have here. Over the past couple of years we at TWBJJ were putting together plans to create a huge ass gym which would in some ways be like Evolve, but in the end we couldn't come up with a way to go totally commercial like that without losing the atmosphere that we have. So now we are going to go about it a different way.

Let them spread all over the place and open up their fitness centres and spend money on all these names. If I had a lot of money, I might be tempted create a little fantasy island gym of my own too- don't hate them for that. Your club might take a hit in attendance for a while but they can't buy that family strength that comes from a group of friends training and competing together.

Take their expansion as a positive, make it look at the way you are pricing your membership and training fees- their fees are very very high and are one of the reasons they are very unlikely to PRODUCE (I don't mean import) good fighters. Their success will ultimately gain you new members so long as you continue to provide a credible alternative by training hard and competing well.

Don't sweat that they are hiring all these Brazilian egos, those of you with the experience can't help feeling that will start to unravel down the road.

Don't concede that they are the best gym in Asia just yet, as someone said earlier it depends on how you define it. For me personally, it comes down to results. As a business they might win hands down on financial profit, but they are an 'MMA school'. I'll be impressed when they have produced Singaporean Muay Thai, BJJ, and MMA Champions.

When you think about the top gyms in the US, what springs to mind? Extreme Couture with their great facilities and the famous name behind it? Legends- with Eddie Bravo and his famous rubber guard and Dope habit? Probably not- you probably think of Greg Jacksons gym if you know MMA. I've no idea what facilities they have or who besides Greg is teaching there. I just know that gym produces great fighters and great fighters move across the country and the world to train there.

I'd be really interested to see how Evolve's existence has ACTUALLY affected the other gyms/clubs in Singapore.

Sinclair, nice post, I totally agree with you. I wish Evolve luck as they are expanding BJJ to a wider community and Chatri seems like a pretty cool guy.

I used to train in the US and saw similar expansion back in the early 2000s in LA when some larger gyms opened that offered one shop BJJ, MT, fitness, etc. They didn't have too much of an effect on our school as the instructor created a family like atmosphere that would have been hard to leave our friends. We lost some people as the gym was closer to their house, they would have left anyways,etc.

If anything Evolve expansion is good for BJJ in SEA and expanding to more people.

Part of the problem is in the SEA area there are limited number of students for the schools and people invested a lot personal time and money in this to get to this point. The # of people training is growing, but you often see the same guys training across the various schools.

Ray actually told me about Bangkok Fight Club and Legacy gym. He said great things about both of them and before leaving thailand I plan on spending time training at all three locations. I found out about this blog from a youtube instructional TMT uploaded online. I was impressed with how willing he was to share resources.

Evolve MMA is the first of it's kind in Southeast Asia when it comes to the scale, investment and permanent/semi-permanent staff. I am sure there will be immediate and long-terms effects to the Singaporean BJJ/MT/MMA scene and I can already see that Evolve will be a standout team in the tournament circuit if they look to participate like they did in Bangkok.

With that said, I doubt Evolve MMA's presence will force other schools to close. I believe it will keep all the neighboring schools to be accountable for their quality of instruction, pricing and facilities.

Yes, there are a number of students that will float between academies and that's been the norm for some time in Southeast Asia. Without there being a large body of established schools with resident black-belts, the guys that are hungry for it will go where the training is good. If you take issue over allegiances/loyalties from the students, I would take a moment to ask what kind of culture are you cultivating at your gym/club/academy that warrants such feelings? Students will come and go but if you do things right, there will be that core group of guys/gals that will stick around to support the team because they know where they come from.

Some great examples of this from my personal opinion are: Kowloon BJJ, Taiwan BJJ, Kreation JJ, VPF, EMAC, BKKBJJ, TMT. The buzz from the students and people who visit these gyms always have glowing comments not just about the training but the camaraderie as well. I haven't visited all the schools listed but this is from my own experience.

It is exciting to hear of all the talent that is present at Evolve but at the end of the day I still have my own academy and training to take care of. My overall concern is that my students receive solid instruction, train hard and have a great time doing it.

The people that are in this for the long haul and with all sincerity will continue regardless of the circumstances. In each of your respective areas you know who got things started when there were only a handful of white-belts and if you don't, do your homework.

I cringe when people tell me they never heard of guys like Terere or Roleta. If your scene is what you're concerned with, know where to invest yourself and make it your home.

This is Chatri Sityodtong with Evolve MMA. Given all the back and forth, I just wanted to throw in my thoughts.

1) I believe that every academy and gym will do well in Asia for the foreseeable future because the pie is growing. MMA, BJJ, and Muay Thai are still in their infancies in Asia (ex Japan). If we work together to build the reputation of our sport, then we will all benefit with an influx of newcomers. I would not be surprised to see the sport of MMA become mainstream in Asia like it is in the US. I might be naive, but I believe that the key for success for all of us is collaboration and friendship.

2) Evolve comes in peace and friendship. We have zero desire to cause problems for anyone. Our #1 goal is simply to provide our students with the best instructors that we can and to try our best to produce good students. The Evolve Instructor Team is very dedicated to making a positive impact on the lives of our students and to seeing our students become great martial artists.

3) As far as I can remember, martial arts has always been a brotherhood. We all leave our blood, sweat, and tears on the mat or in the ring. I have been training, competing, and teaching Muay Thai for almost 20 years. I am a beginner at BJJ (Blue Belt) and have done 2 years of MMA. And the only thing that I have is respect for every warrior that trains hard. And that respect extends to all academies that share a passion to do good by their students.

4) As for all the discussion about Evolve, we only have good things to say about everyone in the community that we have met. You are all welcome to stop by to train anytime at Evolve.

Lets all work together to raise the profile of our sport in Asia. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats. So train hard, love the game, and enjoy the journey.

i say it again because everybody's not listening to me. my good friend in dubai told me 100% that one of the billionaire sheiks owns evolve. why do i trust my source? because he told me about world champ gordinho going to evolve as head bjj professor a few months before it was even announced by evolve itself. i heard that they are going to japan next to open a mega gym near roppongi with some big name bjj world champs like pe de pano. my friend also says that they are trying to hire shinya aoki right now for a multi-year million dollar contract to fight and teach for evolve in japan.

What you are saying makes sense. Especially when you consider from what I understand that the person behind ADCC, who I assume is the investor in Evolve, also has trained extensively with Gracie Barra/Renzo Gracie/Nelson Monterio related team since the early 90s.

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